india's rapid growth is coming at a speed (a speed aided by massive environmental and human justice violations) that will benefit only those who have already benefited.
i call this 'developedment', meaning, more and more development for those who have already developed, but more and more destruction for the 2 crucial pillars of the nation, namely the ecology and the ecology dependent people.

Monday, June 16, 2008

nowadays in modern, democratic india the job of the government is to be the servant of the industry. well, officially and constitutionally the job and role of the government is to be the protector of the people, giving people access to good education, quality health, maintaining communal peace, providing clean water for drinking, etc.

but in modern india, the role of the government is to 'facilitate' land acquisition policy for big mega industries which wants land dirty cheap and also want land irrespective of whether the land owners want to sell it or not or irrespective of whether the proposed industrialization will bring clean jobs or dangerous mining kind of chaos.

but who cares. if you want to go by tamilnadu government smooth words wherein they are promising to acquire land for tata's in tuticorin for a huge mining project, then the role of the government is 'to protect and serve the industry'. that too rich industries.

Senior government officials said though the state would not directly buy large tracts of land on behalf of the steel major, it would ensure that the acquisition process was smooth for Tata Steel to do so on its own.

We will also help Tata Steel by buying small bits of land to let them aggregate continuous land area of 10,000 acres (for mining)," said a senior state official.

development has been turned upside down in india wherein the industries are treated as though they are the poor and the poor rural people who depend on agriculture are as the rich and hence i guess the role of the government is in top reverse gear!!!